Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Microsoft promised the moon in its demo video for their Project Natal, carrying the tagline that it would "make 'you' the controller" and that, as the controller is the current "barrier separating game players from everyone else," with Natal, "the only experience you need is life experience."

As above, Microsoft demoed racing games, fighting games, and simple sports games using full body spatial recognition that let you hold up virtual steering wheels, duck, weave and deliver punches, and kick goals using nothing more than their physical actions.

But the company also took that a step further, promising full facial recognition -- demonstrated by walking in front of your TV and having the Xbox 360 instantly log you in to your personal account -- and object scanning, like holding up your own skateboard and having it instantly placed in a game. Microsoft added that the system could function just as well in a multiplayer environment.

For real world use, apart from a ringing endorsement by none less than Steven Spielberg, Microsoft called up Fable producer Peter Molyneux to demonstrate Lionhead's project Milo -- a virtual friend that they promised could carry on fluid conversations with full voice and emotion recognition, and demoed sleight of hand tricks like drawing on a piece of paper, holding it up to the Natal sensor, and having Milo "receive" that same paper in the virtual world, with additional recognition of what you'd drawn.